Windows 8 consumer preview in pictures

Kicking off the Microsoft event at MWC last week, president of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky, launched the “Consumer Preview” beta version of Windows 8, before its anticipated official full version launch this coming autumn.

With Android having scaled rapidly from smartphones to tablets, and Google Inc. looking to gain traction for its Chrome OS in netbooks, Microsoft has realized it must move fast if it is to retain its software dominance in PCs, as well as elsewhere across the compute continuum. Windows 8 is the firm's first major play at coming up with a unified operating system that can scale across all levels of devices, from computers to tablets, consoles, phones and more.

Especially exciting with this Windows launch is that for the first time, the software stack will also be available on ARM architecture, not just x86 devices. For consumers, this means that the choice becomes a software decision, pure and simple, without the extra complications of having to take the hardware into account when opting for an operating system preference.